"The thing we have been most concerned about is that the people who have influence over Ed will try to use him for their own means," Mattie Fein, the wife and spokeswoman of Lon Snowden's attorney, told WSJ. "These guys have their own agenda here and we aren't so sure that it has Ed's best interest in mind."

She is referring to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

On June 23, after the U.S. voided his passport while he was in Hong Kong, Snowden boarded a plane to Moscow, where a radio host in Moscow "saw about 20 Russian officials, supposedly FSB (i.e. Russian intelligence) agents, in suits, crowding around somebody in a restricted area of the airport."Google Maps/Business Insider

A person close to the situation told the WSJ that Lon Snowden recently spoke with his son over encrypted chat, despite his lawyers advising against it because Kucherena is on vacation.

"For starters, we don't really know who this guy is on the other end," the person said (emphasis ours). "Everything we have done has been through Kucherena because Ed's safety is in the hands of the Russians right now and that's not something we felt was appropriate to do while he was away."